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Spinoza Quotes

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Spinoza Quotes

“We are tossed about by external causes in many ways, and like waves driven by contrary winds, we waver and are unconscious of the issue and our fate.' We think we are most ourselves when we are most passionate, whereas it is then we are most passive, caught in some ancestral torrent of impulse or feeling, and swept on to a precipitate reaction which meets only part of the situation because without thought only part of a situation can be perceived.”

PhilosophyPassionEmotionInstinctImpulseFeelingDriveSpinozaUrgeReactionaryAtavism
Book:The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers
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“Spinoza follows Maimonides in rejecting the ordinary meanings which attach to words, and in asking his readers to attend, not to language, but to the ‘ideas’ which he is attempting to convey by means of it. Common usage is governed by the imagination, which associates words, not with clear and distinct ideas, but with the confused conceptions of experience. In the language of imagination nothing can be truly described, and nothing is more misleadingly rendered by the imagination than the ultimate subject matter of philosophical speculation – God himself”

ImaginationWordSpinoza
Book:Spinoza: A Very Short Introduction
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“After man has persuaded himself that all things which exist are made for him, he must in everything adjudge that to be of the greatest importance which is most useful to him, and he must esteem that to be of surpassing worth by which he is most beneficially affected. In this way he is compelled to form those notions by which he explains nature; such, for instance, as good, evil, order, confusion, heat, cold, beauty, and deformity, etc.; and because he supposes himself to be free, notions like those of praise and blame, sin and merit, have arisen.”

Human NatureSpinoza
Book:Ethics
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“Why should we place Christ at the top and summit of the human race? Was he kinder, more forgiving, more self-sacrificing than Buddha? Was he wiser, did he meet death with more perfect calmness, than Socrates? Was he more patient, more charitable, than Epictetus? Was he a greater philosopher, a deeper thinker, than Epicurus? In what respect was he the superior of Zoroaster? Was he gentler than Lao-tsze, more universal than Confucius? Were his ideas of human rights and duties superior to those of Zeno? Did he express grander truths than Cicero? Was his mind subtler than Spinoza’s? Was his brain equal to Kepler’s or Newton’s? Was he grander in death – a sublimer martyr than Bruno? Was he in intelligence, in the force and beauty of expression, in breadth and scope of thought, in wealth of illustration, in aptness of comparison, in knowledge of the human brain and heart, of all passions, hopes and fears, the equal of Shakespeare, the greatest of the human race?”

WisdomKindnessAtheismBuddhismPatienceStoicismNewtonShakespeareBuddhaWilliam ShakespeareSocratesSpinozaKeplerIsaac NewtonCiceroEpicurusEpictetusGautama BuddhaJohannes KeplerBaruch SpinozaZenoZoroasterBrunoGiordano BrunoLaoziZeno Of Citium
Book:About The Holy Bible
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“In the process of unearthing the root causes of everything around him, Tushar earned a satisfying taste of purposeful beauty: both the beauty of ordered complexity in nature and the beauty of contemplating that ordered complexity, the former encapsulated by Einstein when he said 'The great miracle of physics is that there are no miracles' and the latter embodied by Spinoza when he uttered 'The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.”

WisdomLearningIntellectualCuriositySelf DiscoveryPhilosophy Of LifePursuit Of KnowledgeEinsteinSpinozaBeauty Of Knowledge
Book:The Four-Year Transform: A Campus Comedy
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“Spinoza’s (1632—1677) Ethics starts with a clear framework, explanation, and definition of his terms. In that way, the philosophical inquiry becomes more accessible and precise for a reader or interpreter to understand and grasp. When Spinoza, in his definitions, uses the term substance, we understand that it is God. But when the term substance reappears under point III and then again under VI, which treats God, we must question why. For Spinoza, there is substance and substance. What is the difference between the substance under III and VI? We would say that, according to Spinoza, the ultimate, infinite substance is God, and everything formed is of the same substance. If that is the case, all substance is God or Nature. If all substance is God, then the question is, why separate substance from substance? Spinoza wanted to highlight the difference between the infinite substance of the ultimate Being, God, and the substance that makes Nature in all its forms. But nature, or anything in nature, is substance “which is in itself and is conceived through itself and does not need another “thing” to form it.” Nature is just a manifestation or mode of God or Substance. Substance (substantia) is not a new term and has been used since Aristotle, if not earlier. Perhaps the substance is interchangeable with terms like arche, aether …. fifth element, proton archon (first principle), Plotinus’ Divine mind (nous), or intelligence. Here are Spinoza’s definitions: Of God DEFINITIONS I. By cause of itself I understand that whose essence involves existence, or that whose nature cannot be conceived unless existing. II. That thing is called finite in its own kind (in suo genere) which can be limited by another thing of the same nature. For example, a body is called finite because we always conceive another which is greater. So a thought is limited by another thought; but a body is not limited by a thought, nor a thought by a body. III. By substance I understand that which is in itself and is conceived through itself; in other words, that the conception of which does not need, the conception of another thing from which it must be formed. IV. By attribute I understand that which the intellect perceives of substance as constituting its essence. V. By mode I understand the modifications of substance, or that which is in another thing through which also it is conceived. VI. By God I understand Being absolutely infinite, that is to say, substance consisting of infinite attributes, each one of which expresses eternal and infinite essence.”

GodUniverseSubstanceDejan StojanovicAbsoluteSpinoza
Book:ABSOLUTE
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“Our individual separateness is in a sense illusory; we are parts of the great stream of law and cause, parts of God; we are the flitting forms of a being greater than ourselves, and endless while we die. Our bodies are cells in the body of the race, our race is an incident in the drama of life; our minds are the fitful flashes of eternal light.”

PhilosophySpinozaEverything Is Connected
Book:The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers
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“So I close this long reflection on what I hope is a not-too-quaveringly semi-Semitic note. When I am at home, I will only enter a synagogue for the bar or bat mitzvah of a friend's child, or in order to have a debate with the faithful. (When I was to be wed, I chose a rabbi named Robert Goldburg, an Einsteinian and a Shakespearean and a Spinozist, who had married Arthur Miller to Marilyn Monroe and had a copy of Marilyn’s conversion certificate. He conducted the ceremony in Victor and Annie Navasky's front room, with David Rieff and Steve Wasserman as my best of men.) I wanted to do something to acknowledge, and to knit up, the broken continuity between me and my German-Polish forebears. When I am traveling, I will stop at the shul if it is in a country where Jews are under threat, or dying out, or were once persecuted. This has taken me down queer and sad little side streets in Morocco and Tunisia and Eritrea and India, and in Damascus and Budapest and Prague and Istanbul, more than once to temples that have recently been desecrated by the new breed of racist Islamic gangster. (I have also had quite serious discussions, with Iraqi Kurdish friends, about the possibility of Jews genuinely returning in friendship to the places in northern Iraq from which they were once expelled.) I hate the idea that the dispossession of one people should be held hostage to the victimhood of another, as it is in the Middle East and as it was in Eastern Europe. But I find myself somehow assuming that Jewishness and 'normality' are in some profound way noncompatible. The most gracious thing said to me when I discovered my family secret was by Martin, who after a long evening of ironic reflection said quite simply: 'Hitch, I find that I am a little envious of you.' I choose to think that this proved, once again, his appreciation for the nuances of risk, uncertainty, ambivalence, and ambiguity. These happen to be the very things that 'security' and 'normality,' rather like the fantasy of salvation, cannot purchase.”

ReligionAtheismSecurityIndiaSalvationIslamIraqDebateGermanyTemplesMiddle EastShakespearePolandNormalityAncestorsJewsEastern EuropeIstanbulEinsteinAntisemitismMoroccoSpinozaTunisiaPragueMarilyn MonroeBudapestJewishnessEritreaArthur MillerKurdish PeopleSynagoguesDesecrationDamascusJewish QuestionMartin AmisRabbisReligious ConversionDavid RieffAnnie NavaskyBar And Bat MitzvahBest ManRobert GoldburgSteve WassermanVictor Saul Navasky
Book:Hitch 22: A Memoir
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“Kiek blogybių atsiranda dėl prabangos, pavydo, godumo svaigalų ir kitų panašių dalykų? Vis dėlto jie yra priimtini, nes valstybė negali jų uždrausti įstatymais, kad ir kokie ydingi bebūtų; todėl privalu dar daugiau suteikti sprendimo laisvės, kuri apskritai yra tikra dorybė ir niekaip negali būti uždrausta įstatymais. Be to, iš jos nekyla tokių nepatogumų, kurių (kaip tuoj parodysiu) valstybės pareigūnai negalėtų išvengti; jau nekalbu, kad ji yra būtina mokslo ir menų tobulėjimui, nes jie gali būti sėkmingai vystomi tik tų, kurie turi laisvą ir nevaržomą sprendimą.”

PolitikaSpinozaReligijaSvaigalaiValstybė
Book:Tratado Teológico-Político; Tratado Político Tomo II
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“Consistent with the liberal views of the Enlightenment, Leibniz was an optimist with respect to human reasoning and scientific progress. Although he was a great reader and admirer of Spinoza, Leibniz, being a confirmed deist, rejected emphatically Spinoza's pantheism.”

ViewsProgressEnlightenmentScientistReasoningOptimistPantheismDeismLiberalScientific ProgressSpinozaLeibnizBaruch SpinozaGottfried LeibnizGottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Book:Marketing Theory: Foundations, Controversy, Strategy, and Resource-Advantage Theory
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“Ook de 'Ethica' bleef achter slot en grendel - en zou voor velen nog jarenlang een gesloten boek blijven. Spinoza wist het en sprak het uit: 'En voorzeker, wèl moet het moeilijk zijn wat men zo zelden aantreft. Want indien de redding voor het grijpen lag en zonder grote inspanning te bereiken was, hoe zou het dan mogelijk zijn dat zij door nagenoeg iedereen over het hoofd wordt gezien? Maar al het voortreffelijke is even moeilijk als zeldzaam.' Zo onthult zich het geheim van de 'Ethica' voor onze ogen als de kalme, consequente moed, waarmee de meest belangeloze en stoïcijnse denker van de zeventiende eeuw, een tot zwijgen gedoemde, de God die volgens kerken en synagoge buiten de wereld en boven het mensdom moet worden gezocht (en gevreesd), in wereld en mensdom liet opgaan - : uitdrukking van het unieke, duizendvormige, ongeschapen zijn, het éne lichaam met de éne ziel. Door dit te doen heeft Spinoza niet alleen de middeleeuwen ver teruggestoten; hij werd in de eerste plaats ons begin. Zijn 'wellevenskunst' sluit met een accoord van sober optimisme, dat tegelijk het vaste geloof verkondigt in de rede als laatste, hoogste macht die enkeling en samenleving tot hun ware bestemming kan leiden - 'het accoord van de door eigen kracht verlosbare mens'.”

SpinozaZielEthicaWellevenskunst
Book:Spinoza: Beeldenstormer en wereldbouwer
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“The defect of democracy is its tendency to put mediocrity into power; and there is no way of avoiding this except by limiting office to men of "trained skill". Numbers by themselves cannot produce wisdom, and may give the best favors of office to the grossest flatterers. "The fickle disposition of the multitude almost reduces those who have experience of it to despair; for it is governed solely by emotions, and not be reason." Thus democratic government becomes a procession of brief-lived demagogues, and men of worth are loath to enter lists where they must be judged and rated by their inferiors. Sooner or later the more capable men rebel against such a system, though they be in a minority. "Hence I think it is that democracies change into aristocracies, and these at length into monarchies"; people at last prefer tyranny to chaos. Equality of power is an unstable condition men are by nature unequal; and "he who seeks equality between unequals seeks an absurdity.”

DemocracyEqualityMonarchyElectionsAristocracySpinozaMob RuleProblems With Society
Book:The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers
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“With the growth of civilisation in Europe, and with the revival of letters and of science in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the ethical and intellectual criticism of theology once more recommenced, and arrived at a temporary resting-place in the confessions of the various reformed Protestant sects in the sixteenth century; almost all of which, as soon as they were strong enough, began to persecute those who carried criticism beyond their own limit. But the movement was not arrested by these ecclesiastical barriers, as their constructors fondly imagined it would be; it was continued, tacitly or openly, by Galileo, by Hobbes, by Descartes, and especially by Spinoza, in the seventeenth century; by the English Freethinkers, by Rousseau, by the French Encyclopaedists, and by the German Rationalists, among whom Lessing stands out a head and shoulders taller than the rest, throughout the eighteenth century; by the historians, the philologers, the Biblical critics, the geologists, and the biologists in the nineteenth century, until it is obvious to all who can see that the moral sense and the really scientific method of seeking for truth are once more predominating over false science. Once more ethics and theology are parting company.”

ScienceCivilizationEuropeCriticismPersecutionScience And ReligionScience Vs ReligionHobbesSpinozaDescartesRousseauGalileoProtestantGalileo GalileiBaruch SpinozaDiderotGeologistsRene DescartesRené DescartesThomas HobbesBaron D HolbachD HolbachDenis DiderotJean MeslierLessingPaul Henri D HolbachGotthold Ephraim LessingGotthold LessingJean Jacque RousseauMeslier
Book:The Evolution Of Theology: An Anthropological Study
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“Whatever the philosophical variety, the authority of exegesis will reside, not in the political sovereign, but in the enlightened philosophy that informs exegesis. Each in turn will provide yet another variation of Spinoza's hermeneutic of condescension. But this is also a hermeneutic of self-divinization. Therefore, each will invest his philosophy with all the religious certainty and zeal originally invested by Spinoza in his particular philosophy, and each will exhibit the same unshakeable faith and enthusiasm in the spread of its gospel and the progressive divinization of humanity. The divinization soon enough focuses on the process rather than the goal.”

ChristianityTheologySecularismSpinozaExegesisBiblical CriticismDivinization
Author:Scott Hahn & Benjamin Wiker
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“Malebranche teaches that we see all things in God himself. This is certainly equivalent to explaining something unknown by something even more unknown. Moreover, according to him, we see not only all things in God, but God is also the sole activity therein, so that physical causes are so only apparently; they are merely occasional causes. ( Recherches de la vérité , Livre VI, seconde partie, chap. 3.) And so here we have essentially the pantheism of Spinoza who appears to have learned more from Malebranche than from Descartes.”

CausesTeachActivityAll ThingsSoleExplainingOccasionalPantheismChapsSpinoza
Author:Arthur Schopenhauer
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“The Theatre of the Absurd has renounced arguing about the absurdity of the human condition; it merely presents it in being - that is, in terms of concrete stage images. This is the difference between the approach of the philosopher and that of the poet; the difference, to take an example from another sphere, between the idea of God in the works of Thomas Aquinas or Spinoza and the intuition of God in those of St. John of the Cross or Meister Eckhart - the difference between theory and experience.”

HumansIdeasTermDifferencesConditionsStageExamplePoetTheoryApproachCrossesPhilosopherIntuitionTheatreArguingAbsurdSpheresHuman ConditionConcreteAbsurditySpinozaSt John Of The Cross
Book:The Theatre of the Absurd
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“The true clerc is Vauvenargues, Lamarck, Fresnel, Spinoza, Schiller, Baudelaire, César Franck, who were never diverted from single-hearted adoration of the beautiful and the divine by the necessity of earning their daily bread. But such clercs are inevitably rare. The rule is that the living creature condemned to struggle for life turns to practical passions, and thence to the sanctifying of those passions.”

BeautifulTurnsPassionStruggleDivineCreaturesPracticalsBreadEarningHeartedAdorationLiving CreaturesDaily BreadSpinozaBaudelaireSars
Author:Julien Benda
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“Spinoza , for example, thought that insight into the essence of reality, into the harmonious structure of the eternal universe, necessarily awakens love for this universe. For him, ethical conduct is entirely determined by such insight into nature, just as our devotion to a person may be determined by insight into his greatness or genius. Fears and petty passions, alien to the great love of the universe, which is logos itself, will vanish, according to Spinoza, once our understanding of reality is deep enough.”

MayPersonsEnoughRealityUniversePassionUnderstandingExampleGreatnessGeniusEternalEssenceStructureInsightDeterminedDevotionAliensEthicalPettyGreat LoveHarmoniousLogosSpinoza
Book:Eclipse of Reason
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“the ordinary man's experience is chaotic, irregular, fragmentary. [He] falls in love or reads Spinoza, and these two experiences have nothing to do with each other, or with the noise of the typewriter, or the smell of cooking; in the mind of the poet these experiences are always forming new wholes”

MenMindArtTwoPoetryFallPoetOrdinaryCookingFalling In LoveSmellNoiseChaoticTypewritersOrdinary ManSpinoza
Book:The Sacred Wood and Major Early Essays
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“The impersonal aspect [of God] (Nirakara, Nirguna) is called Brahman, or 'unknowable' by Herbert Spencer, 'will' by Schopenhauer, Absolute Noumenon by some 'substance' by Spinoza. The personal aspect (Sakara) of that Being is termed 'Ishvara' or Allah, Hari, Jehova, Father in Heaven, Buddha, Siva, etc. Just as vapour or steam is formless, so also God is formless in His unmanifested or transcendental state.”

StatesFatherHeavenAspectAbsolutesSubstanceEtcSteamTranscendentalBrahmanFather In HeavenSpinozaVapour
Author:Sivananda
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“Truth and Beauty (perhaps Keats was wrong in identifying them: perhaps they have the relation of Wit and Humour, or Rain and Rainbow) are of interest only to hungry people. There are several kinds of hunger. If Socrates, Spinoza, and Santayana had had free access to a midnight icebox we would never have heard of them. Shall I be ashamed of my little mewing truths?... I ask to be forgiven: they are such tiny ones.”

PeopleIfsKindLittlesPhilosophyAsksInterestHeardHumourRainRelationHungerAccessTinyWitHungryAshamedRainbowForgivenMidnightIdentifyingSpinozaTruth And Beauty
Author:Christopher Morley
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“There's a sense in which Marx does contribute to the fund of human knowledge, and we can no more dismiss him than we can [George] Hegel or [Jean-Jacques] Rousseau or [Baruch] Spinoza or [Charles] Darwin; you don't have to be a Darwinian to appreciate Darwin's views, and I don't have to be a Marxist to appreciate what is valid in a number of [Karl] Marx's writings-and Marx would call that a form of simple commodity production rather than capitalism.”

WritingHumansDoeFormSimpleViewsNumbersCapitalismAppreciateProductionsFundCommodityMarxistHegelHuman KnowledgeSpinozaJean Jacques RousseauJacques Rousseau
Author:Murray Bookchin
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“I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe - because, like Spinoza's God, it won't love us in return.”

HumansWholeScienceUniverseParticularPlanetsReturnMathematicsMathMathematicalNumbers And MathSpinozaMath LoveMath And LoveMath Is Like
Book:The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell: The private years, 1884-1914
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“The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man's image; so that there can be no church whose central teachings are based on it. Hence it is precisely among the heretics of every age that we find men who were filled with this highest kind of religious feeling and were in many cases regarded by their contemporaries as atheists, sometimes also as saints. Looked at in this light, men like Democritus, Francis of Assisi, and Spinoza are closely akin to one another.”

KnowsMenKindHas BeensSometimesFeelingsLightAgeChurchReligiousCasesTeachingGeniusHighestFilledAtheistSaintDogmaDistinguishedHereticSpinoza
Book:Ideas and Opinions
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“All that is good in our history is gathered in libraries. At this moment, Plato is down there at the library waiting for us. So is Aristotle. Spinoza is there and so is Kats. Shelly and Byron adn Sam Johnson are there waiting to tell us their magnificent stories. All you have to do is walk in the library door and the great company open their arms to you. They are so happy to see you that they come out with you into the street and to your home. And they do what hardly any friend will-- they are silent when you wish to think.”

ThinkingMomentsStoriesHomeWishWaitingWalksCompanyDoorsStreetsArmsSilentLibraryMagnificentPlatoJohnsonGreat CompanyByronSpinozaHappy To See You
Author:Will Durant
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“I can understand your aversion to the use of the term 'religion' to describe an emotional and psychological attitude which shows itself most clearly in Spinoza... I have not found a better expression than 'religious' for the trust in the rational nature of reality that is, at least to a certain extent, accessible to human reason.”

HumansI CanReasonUseShowsRealityCertainFoundTermReligiousAttitudeEmotionalExpressionRationalPsychologicalAversionHuman ReasonSpinoza
Author:Albert Einstein
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“It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I feel also not able to imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere. My views are near those of Spinoza: admiration for the beauty of and belief in the logical simplicity of the order which we can grasp humbly and only imperfectly. I believe that we have to content ourselves with our imperfect knowledge and understanding and treat values and moral obligations as a purely human problem-the most important of all human problems.”

FeelsBelieveHumansImportantIdeasProblemSeemsAbleValuesOrderBeliefI BelieveUnderstandingGoalViewsMoralImagineConceptsTreatsSimplicityObligationLogicalAdmirationSpheresImperfectMoral ObligationHuman ProblemsKnowledge And UnderstandingSpinozaValues And Morals
Author:Albert Einstein
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“Through luminous and erudite readings of the texts, Hasana Sharp shows us how profound and radical is Spinoza's conception of nature and his claim that humans always remain part of nature, acting solely according to the same rules. She demonstrates the political consequences of adopting this perspective through a provocative intervention in contemporary feminist theory, while along the way opening promising avenues for future work in a variety of other fields, such as animal studies and ecology. This is a challenging and important book.”

WayHumansImportantBookShowsPoliticalReadingChallengesAnimalActingStudyFieldsTheoryPerspectiveConsequenceClaimsProfoundFeministContemporaryOpeningRadicalVarietyConceptionEcologyInterventionAvenuesLuminousProvocativeAdoptingEruditeSpinozaFeminist TheoryFuture Work
Author:Michael Hardt
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“A writer must always try to have a philosophy and he should also have a psychology and a philology and many other things. Without a philosophy and a psychology and all these various other things he is not really worthy of being called a writer. I agree with Kant and Schopenhauer and Plato and Spinoza and that is quite enough to be called a philosophy. But then of course a philosophy is not the same thing as a style.”

ShouldTryingEnoughPhilosophyCoursesPsychologyStyleAgreePhilosopherVariousWorthyPlatoSpinozaPhilology
Author:Gertrude Stein
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“All men are brothers, we like to say, half-wishing sometimes in secret it were not true. But perhaps it is true. And is the evolutionary line from protozoan to Spinoza any less certain? That also may be true. We are obliged, therefore, to spread the news, painful and bitter though it may be for some to hear, that all living things on earth are kindred.”

MenMaySometimesEarthCertainWishLinesSecretHalfBrotherNewsPainfulSpreadBitterBeing TrueObligedLiving ThingsKindredSpinoza
Book:The Serpents of Paradise: A Reader
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